Woke Up New
by Heart Torn Out
Summary: Agent Phil Coulson is dead... movie spoilers! and slash!
1. What Do I Do?

**Will finish in like, an hour. Just my feeling on what they did to Phil Coulson in the movie.**

**And how those bastards made me cry like a baby in public.**

**Title from Woke Up New, by The Mountain Goats**

**Established Clint/Coulson relationship.**

* * *

**Woke Up New**

"_On the morning that I woke up without you for the first time, I felt free and I felt lonely and I felt scared…_

…_.And I sang oh, what do I do? What do I do? What do I do? What do I do without you?"_

Clint is the last to know. And its not his fault, Loki had control of him when it had happened and no one told him after he got back. He's on the building rooftop, calling them as he sees them, leading Tony to Thor where they're beating on those alien things when it happens.

"Hey Coulson. I bet this is way above your pay grade, huh?" Clint says into his comm. Unexpectedly, the line is silent. There's no answering dry comment about focusing or grunt of agreement. Clint let another arrow fly, and frowned, warning Steve of another oncoming attack. "Coulson?" he says. Then he smirks. "Is this punishment for letting Loki get to me, sir?" When he gets no response, he says, "Coulson are you even there?"

No. Answer.

"Guys," Clint says, addressing the other Avengers who had studiously and suspiciously been ignoring him, "where's Coulson?" No answer. "Hello? Steve, do you know?" He hears a grunt and spots Steve in the thick of a fight. He scans around until he finds Natasha. She won't ignore him. "Tasha where's Phil?"

He hears, "Phil," and that's Tony, the there's a crunch of metal and he hears Natasha say in a tired voice, "Clint, he's-"

And then Clint says, "Hang on," and shoots an arrow at another alien. He reaches back for another one to find that _his quiver is empty._ He snags one from a fallen alien and takes a split second to think before he tosses himself off the building, switching arrowheads till he has a claw that punches through a window, allowing him to swing through the rest of it, shattering the window as he crashes through. He groans from his place on the floor and shifts, glass digging into his back.

"You're giving me a massage when we get home," Clint says, trying for Phil again. All he hears is a gasp and a muffled swear, one belonging to Steve, the other to Tony.

And Phil never answers back.

* * *

"Where is he?" Clint asks, more like growls, when it's all said and done. Thor and Loki are long gone and he's staring down the rest of them. "Where is he? What happened? Where's Phil?" The panic threatens to choke him when Natasha's face goes blank and in contrast, Tony and Steve's pale. Bruce looks away.

Before Clint can say another word, Fury walks out from his office and says, "Agent Barton, can I have a word?" When Clint doesn't move, he adds, "A private one?" and gestures to his office.

They walk in and the rest of them wait until a few moments later, there's a strangled yell and Clint walks out , slamming the door into the wall, the metal creaking in protest on it's hinges. His eyes are glassy and his face is contorted into something like anguish. He tries to meet everyone's eyes, but no one will look at him.

He leaves the room after that.

In the following weeks and months, if Clint wasn't a loner before, he becomes one now. He speaks to no one, goes right home after missions, and refuses to say _his_ name.

Because Agent Phil Coulson is _dead_.

* * *

**Just another chapter left. Have at it.**


	2. What Do I Do Without You?

**Was supposed to post this last night but...in my defense, it was 3 in the morning and I fell asleep.**

**So here's the second part of it.**

**Title and quote from The Mountain Goats' song, Woke Up New.**

**Enjoy.**

* * *

**Woke Up New Part 2**

"…_the first time I made coffee for just one person I made too much of it. So I drank it all, just because you hate it when I let things go to waste…_

…_and I sang oh, what I do? What do I do? What do I do? What do I do without you?"_

Six months later finds the Avengers (minus Clint) downtown at a diner. They're all in civilian clothes, even Thor, and exhausted after a major fight against Doombots (the Fantastic Four are on an inter-galactic mission and the X-Men are in Europe). Clint had gone home, tired and quiet, only nodding at Natasha in farewell. Then was gone. And so the others had gone on without him, still feeling the loss of not only Coulson, but Clint as well.

"Well this still sucks," Tony says, tearing into his burger. Beside him, Steve grunts and steals his fries. Natasha just stays quiet as Thor munches on chicken wings and Bruce snacks on a salad. The table, though full, is strangely empty. She's worried about everyone, really, and she has every right to be.

Just as she's about to say something – God, she doesn't even know what, probably something scathing – a voice says, "Captain Rogers, are you sure you want to be sharing food with Mr. Stark? After all, you don't know where his hands have been." Everyone just stops and Thor drops the chicken wing he'd been eating. Bruce starts to shake and Coulson looks to Tony and says, "Mr. Stark, please escort Dr. Banner to the park down the street so he can calm down. Preferably _before_ he destroys this diner." Tony looks somewhere between lost and livid, but he coaxes Bruce outside and leaves Thor, Steve and Natasha.

Thor grins. "Son of Coul! Welcome back to the land of the living, my friend!"

Steve blinks. "But your-your cards…"

"Fury," Natasha says calmly, thought she's boiling with rage. They had faked it. Or something. And _Clint_.

"Where's Agent Barton?" Phil asks. Steve is still floundering, but Natasha isn't. And she hears the fear in Phil's voice, that maybe Clint isn't around anymore, that he left or worse.

"It's been six months, Coulson. Where do you think he is?" Phil tenses up at her words, looks like he's dying inside, his heart breaking in his eyes, and she has mercy on him. A lot softer, she says, "He's home Phil. Right where you left him."

Phil doesn't thank her, but it's understood. He's gone a moment later and then Tony and Bruce wander in. Bruce is doing some heavy breathing. Tony looks fit to murder.

"That absolute bastard," he says, then sits and stuffs the rest of his burger in his mouth angrily. Steve nods, too good to swear, and steals more of his fries. Thor doesn't seem to understand the implications of what happened, since he doesn't know that humans can't come back from the dead like Asgardians do from time to time. And Natasha?

Natasha just smiles.

* * *

It's taken Clint a while to get to where he is. He's made a lot of progress during the last six months of being alone. It only takes three weeks to get used to the silence in the small house they had shared. It takes two months, though, from him to stop pulling out two coffee mugs in the morning. Because Phil wouldn't be having coffee with hum. Not ever again.

They had moved all of Phil's office things into the house shortly after lint had been told. Clint still keeps all of it locked away in the spare room along with all of Phil's Captain America paraphernalia. He can't bear to look at it. It hurts too much still.

And there's another thing that Clint hasn't gotten used to in the six months he's been alone. He can deal with the pitying looks, the silence in his ear on a mission, the empty office he walks by everyday at headquarters; but what Clint can't deal with is sleeping alone. Every night he dreads going to bed, to that huge empty mattress. It's lonely and kills him slowly every time. He misses the connection, the reassuring press of a warm body against his, loving words whispered into his ear, knowing that he wasn't alone, that he was loved and could love in return. He misses waking up wrapped in safe arms, utterly blissful, sleep eyes and pillow-creased cheeks staring at him contentedly. God Clint misses him, misses Phil with a burning kind of pain. It's so unfair Clint thinks, unfair and wrong and he will never get over this. Clint has come to accept that. He will be alone, but he'd rather have had Phil and lost him then never had him at all.

He'd gone straight home after that last mission, after making sure every arrow hit home with deadly accuracy. Everyone else had gone out to eat, he supposed. And he feels bad about distancing himself from his friends but, while being home hurt, it's a relief. It reminds him that he had Phil at one time, and he feels sage among all the things they shared. True he has yet to remove any of Phil's clothes and books and shoes, leaving them all in the spare room, but he's not ready for that. Not yet. And all their pictures are still up, and he'll never take them down; he won't.

The house is empty (as usual) when he gets there. He changes into civie clothes quickly and heads to the kitchen for a bite to eat. Clint is the cook of the house. He'd been teaching Clint a few basic cooking survival skills before he'd…

Clint shakes his head and reaches for a pan and some eggs. _Don't think about it_, is his new mantra. But this time, it gets cut off short when he opens the cabinet and there, in Phil's neat script, is a stick note pressed to the inside of the cabinet door, reminding Clint to go get more peanut butter. It's signed with a P.C.-B. with a heart and a winky face, and Clint only has time to breathe, "_Oh God_," before he breaks down completely.

Clint slides to the floor, burying his face in the sweater (Phil's) that he's wearing. His back presses to the fridge and he just sobs a bit. It happens at least once a week, four times a month, twenty-four times since Phil's died. Clint has these massive breakdowns that leave him depressed and hollow afterwards. They're always at home though. He wouldn't dare do it in front of anyone else. He's good, thanks very much, he doesn't need to see any of those shrinks. He's got no desire to.

It's over then, and he wants to stay where he is forever. That note, the initials, it just rips him apart; the P for Phil, the C for Coulson and the hyphen for the B… The B is for Barton. It fills Clint with pain every day to think he had been so close to marrying Phil. They had decided to do it after the Avengers Initiative was well underway. The day of their supposed wedding, Clint hadn't left the house; hell, he hadn't left his bed. He's pretty sure he didn't even _move_. He hadn't been able to stand the thought that Phil wasn't there to bind himself to Clint for the rest of their lives. It had, ultimately, been the worst part out of everything that had happened.

And then he had gotten up the nest morning and headed to work. No one had said a word. They all had known better.

Clint finally gets up off the floor. He entertains the idea of throwing the sticky note away, but he can't. On the weeks leading up to the almost-wedding, Phil had left those same initials around on everything just because he had known how it made Clint smile. So no. Clint can't throw it away, so he folds it carefully and puts it in his sweater pocket. He starts to bustle about, make an omelet, do something to get his mind off of things, when hears it. The front door opens. Someone is _opening his front door and coming inside. _

Clint slowly closes the gas to the stove and flicks off the light, plunging the house into darkness. He hadn't noticed how late it was. He creeps around, using his wonderful eyesight to see who it is trespassing. All he gets is an outline of a man in dark clothes, maybe a suit. AS Clint slinks around, sneaking up on the intruder, he is no longer the mourning fiancé – he Agent Hawkeye of SHIELD, an Avenger and some asshole just broke into his and his dead fiancé's house.

Not gonna fly.

He sees the man turn right as he jumps on him, grappling. Oddly enough, the perpetrator doesn't fight back, let's Clint wrestle him to the ground and its so fucking familiar that Clint gets a flashback of wrestling Phil playfully to the bed and landing just as they are landing now. He shakes his head in disgust, planting his knees firmly on the man's chest, holding him down.

"Who the hell are you and how did you get in?" Clint snarls, reaching for the light. He flicks it on, another threat ready on his tongue, but it dies in his throat as he meets his burglar face to face. He's not a burglar at all.

It's Phil.

Too shocked to say anything, Clint knows he has about twenty seconds before he's an incoherent mess. So he takes that time to do something meaningful. And he punches Phil in the face.

_And then_ he collapses and breaks down in tears.

* * *

A set-up.

It was all an elaborate set-up that Fury planned to get the Avengers together. Faked Phil's death, leaving them with something to fight for, sent Phil on a mission to keep him busy for a while, really let it sink in. Until Phil had found out Clint hadn't been informed and demanded that Fury end this. Something must have gone down for it to work out in Phil's favor, but now he was here and safe and alive and _Clint won't let go._

And why should he? He's been suffering for _six_ _months_, he thought Phil was dead for _six_ _months_. How could he just… forget all of that?

They're in bed now, laying together and Clint is merely hiccupping. Phil's been back in his life for only two hours and he's only stopped crying for about five minutes of that time. There's a bruise on Phil's cheek that neither of them is sorry about and he has his arms wrapped so tight around Clint that it'll bruise and they won't be sorry about those either.

Clint is quiet, thoughtful, holding on with everything he has, trying to keep himself together. He's lucky that he's been working with SHIELD for a while and it used to big shocks like these, bigger even. He's recovering a lot faster than a normal guy would if their partner supposedly came back from the dead.

"You're real?" he asks quietly. It's the first and last time he's going to ask because he will believe anything that comes out of Phil's mouth right about now.

So when Phil says, "Yes, of course," Clint merely nods and doesn't ask again.

Instead he says, "Never again."

And Phil responds, "Oh God no, never. He can threaten me all he wants, I'm not going to do this again." And then Phil's voice cracks. "I thought they were going to tell _at least_ you. He said he would. He kept saying he would." He swallowed. "I'm so sorry Clint." And Phil only apologizes once, because he knows Clint knows he means it.

Clint nods. In all honesty, they had both been basically going through the same thing. They both looked and felt like shit, they both craved this closeness, they both were desperately clinging to the other in hopes that they wouldn't wake up and this would all be a dream.

"Do the others know?" Clint asks, murmuring against Phil's neck, their bodies still entwined.

Phil nods and rubs Clint's back. "Yes. I thought you'd be with them, but…" He trails off and doesn't say another word. And then Clint slowly, timidly pulls out the little sticky note and hands it over with shaking fingers to Phil. Phil hasn't cried this whole time, but upon seeing the note he does. "You kept it?" His voice breaks and he practically sobs, "_Clint_…"

"I-I couldn't just toss away a piece of you," Clint whispers. He presses himself as close as he can to Phil, wants to get closer, to climb inside the other man and become another part of him. He breathes in the scent that he'd been dying to get away from these last few months and relishes in it, never wants the smell to go away.

When he pulls back, he's shy and says, "Are we… are we still making the B part happen?"

Phil doesn't get it at first, not until he looks at the note and realizes that Clint is asking about the initials he signed it with. "Yes, Barton," he says, chuckling and hiccupping through the tears. "God _yes_, we're still getting married. _You idiot._"

"_Marry me_?" Clint whispers, just in case.

And Phil chokes on a sob as he responds with a, "_Yes_."

For the first time in six months, 24 weeks, 183 days, 4,392 hours, 263,520 seconds, Phil Coulson and Clint Barton kiss.

_And they don't let go._

* * *

**Ok. That's it for this one. Tell me what you thought, yeah?**

**REVIEWS ARE AWESOME THANKS VERY MUCH.**

**Now, I'mma go sleep before I pass out and die, yeah? **

**Yeah.**


End file.
